X-men - All Day Permanent Red
Title: All Day Permanent Red
Author: smirnoffmule
Fandom: X-men Comicsverse
Pairing/characters: Logan/OMC
Rating: PG-13
Summary: Logan's never been one to back down from a fight, but in times of war, it's all too easy for things to just fall apart. Written for the lgbtfest prompt: "X-Men Comicsverse, Wolverine, the experience of being bisexual in one of the earlier eras of his 100+ year lifespan."
A/N: Big thanks to lilacsigil for a speedy and helpful beta. The title is from War Music by Christopher Logue.
Portsmouth, England. August, 1942.
Getting shot in the guts always gives Logan heartburn. No other part of his anatomy ever gives him so much crap about putting itself back together. If he keeps moving, it lets him ignore it, like it knows he's got a job to do, but he's been sitting still for hours, with the long ride home, the wait at the docks, the wait for debriefing, the wait now for transport back to the barracks, and it's really starting to gripe. Sea air is creeping in his lungs and in his bones.
He closes his eyes, and dozes like a big cat - outwardly quite still, but his senses never stop tracking the people around him until they start to creep into his dreams. Everyone smells of blood and brine, even the ones who think they've washed it off. Bad soap. Carbolic. Damp in the brick work. Stomach churning. Fuck it all.
He opens his eyes, and sees right away what might have prickled him awake. The guy next to him on the bench is leaning forward to look at him. When their eyes meet, he sits back, and looks a little flustered. Smiles like a caught out kid. His hair is wet from washing, and he has a fresh red cut snaking down from his hair line, bleaching all the colour from his face.
Logan considers glowering, but can't quite muster the energy. His belly is a sleepy burn. Kid was probably just checking to see he hadn't died, and who could blame him? They shared a boat ride home with corpses; shared an ocean too, not so long ago. He fully intends to close his eyes again, is starting to do so, when the guy speaks.
“They kept asking me what I saw,” he says. “Did I see men down, did I see planes. Of course I bloody did. Where the fuck do they think I've been all night?”
He's English. Logan remembers the voice from the beach, hissing in his ear, “If you're alive, shift.” He probably owes this guy something, for effort at least. He can't come close to a smile right now, but he doesn't scowl.
Funny - Not 48 hours ago, he was playing poker at Halnaker, and kind of bored. They don't get a warning, just a pocket full of francs, and a ride out to the harbour. Three helmsmen down before they even hit France, and all around, a light show. The tobacco factory by the beach is burning, throwing up a false dawn, but even over that, and the unclean sea, he can smell the dead men on the shore. Around him, nobody moves much or says a lot as the sea rolls them closer, their bayonets clutched in bloodless knuckles. Every nerve-end in his body roars; tells him he should hunker down, stay low, stay close, pack himself in, but none of these men around him can afford to take more than one bullet. He pushes his way to the front of the boat.
“I thought you got shot,” the English guy says. Kind of nonchalant. He shrugs a pouch of tobacco out of his pocket. Between that and the blood and the unwashed brine, Logan's stomach announces its intention to roll. His words feel like a curse; the worst damn luck to try and put upon a soldier. Their conversation is starting to draw attention. He remembers the flash, right on top of him, like the world exploded with him at the centre. Blood in his nose and rocks under his knees. The sea groaning. When sense reeled back, he became aware he was lying on someone who was kicking him. That was this guy.
He'd better talk. It feels like an effort, hauling words up from his guts.
“Not me,” he says.
“You fell on your arse.”
“You did too.”
The guy smiles like a grimace. He rolls a cigarette one handed. His fingers are deft; they're barely shaking. Dabs the paper to his tongue. Strokes the edge smooth with a thumb. Passes it to Logan like an afterthought, and then starts the process again for himself.
“I hope you've got a light,” he says. “I left mine in Dieppe.”
*****
Being special ops, Logan is outside of a brotherhood. He doesn't have a regiment, just gets attached by turns to whoever's seeing action. What's left of the Canadian strike force is sent back inland to Halnaker, to pick up on their poker game. Logan stays at Eastney, by the harbour, in case they want to throw him at the French again.
Eastney Barracks is an old stone hive of Royal Marines, and buzzes louder than Halnaker - more men crammed in, and more egos too. His new friend's name is Bobby Sethis. He shows Logan around, and points out the clock tower on the mess hall with particular pride. The clock face is shattered, the hands are still.
“They tried to hit us where it really hurts,” he says. “Right in the lunch. Middle of the day, can you believe it? No one killed but the clock. Next Jerry I come across, I'm going to break his watch just to make us even.”
It turns out Logan knows Sethis, by name at least. Units from Halnaker would come to Eastney for drills, and return full of stories; fights and jokes and dramas, all with this guy in the thick of them. It takes some work to make yourself notorious amongst Marines, and Logan is grudgingly impressed. Sethis is already in the planning stages of another Dieppe raid to recover his lost lighter.
When the Germans drop their pictures, he claims he can see it washed up on the shore. A propaganda bomb, it's called, and all Southern England takes it - photographs of Dieppe beach, strewn about with dead men. They aren't supposed to see them, but some grunt named Keane got given one by a girl in town. There is silence as it's passed around the barracks, every grainy face examined with care. Bravado swells when none of them look familiar - probably because they're all Canadians. Logan takes a long look, mostly without seeing. Without the smell, it doesn't bother him, and the dead are just a faceless jumble, loud in their stillness. Bob, who is perched on the edge of his bed, leans over and flicks a corpse with a thumbnail.
“I think I owed him money,” he says.
Keane looms over them, his face looking sour.
“You owe me money, Sethis,” he says. Logan gives his photo back to him. He has already learned that owing people money - and beer, and smokes - is pretty much a permanent state of being for Bob, and one that troubles him not in the slightest.
“What for?” Logan asks him, as Keane turns away.
“Shagging his sister,” Bob says cheerfully, and a little too loudly. Keane's back stiffens, but the whole room starts laughing. He'd be taking them all on if he wants to make a deal of it.
“It's not that,” Bob tells him later. “That I owe him money. Everyone owes everyone some shit they haven't got. He doesn't like me.”
“How come?”
“One of life's great mysteries,” he shrugs, his shoulders a little too casual. Catches Logan's eye and smiles, quick as a whip. Everything about him is quick; his wit, his speech, his temper. He laughs all the time, irrespective of his actual mood. His greatest attribute in Logan's eyes is he knows when to stop asking questions.
He's from London, he says. Logan doesn't mind cities, but can't imagine growing up in one. He's conscripted too, which comes as a surprise; he holds a gun like he's regular army. He can fit in any skin, Logan figures, if he wants it bad enough. They fall into step over the next few days, tend to drift together in crowded rooms.
Life in barracks starts to grate on Logan fast, especially at Eastney, which is hemmed in by city and pressed against the sea. Having company he can stand is a help; it keeps the heat off. People are more inclined to look twice at a man on his own. As it is, he's quickly accepted as one of Bobby's natural satellites, and Bob can handle talking, if there's talking to be done.
Still, he seeks out quiet moments. They take to sharing cigarettes in corners. Bob's sociable; he likes to talk, but he's background noise to Logan now. He knows it too, and can spot when he's been tuned out. It becomes a game of sorts, that Bob will bait him until he's hooked back in. It's a battle of wills sometimes, but good natured enough that Logan will let him win sometimes just to keep him playing.
They spend one evening sitting against the clock tower, and Sethis starts to sing him All the Nice Girls Love a Sailor. Logan jabs him in the ribs to shut him up, and Bob catches his hand and keeps it. The bones in Logan's knuckles don't sit quite like other people's, and Bob spreads out his fingers, turns his hand over, closes it to a fist. Logan watches him do it like it's someone else's.
“I've got a girl,” Bob announces. “Back home. You?”
“There are girls,” Logan says. “Wouldn't say I got any of them.”
Bob smiles, half to himself, it seems. He reaches out his hand to Logan's stomach, and slides it up under his shirt. His fingers are cold, and brush against where there should be bullet scars, but there's nothing left to feel. Even the hair has grown back in.
“Is that a trick?” he asks. “I know you got hit. I saw you turn a fucking somersault.”
Logan considers a lie, but feels like he ought to stop this now if he's going that way.
“I heal fast,” he says instead. “Always have.” He does not have the language for a further explanation. A lot seems to hinge on how Bobby will take this. His hand under Logan's shirt is letting in the night air.
Bob says nothing at all, just leans and presses his lips to Logan's stomach. It tickles, like the echo of a scar.
After that, it's more than cigarettes they share in quiet corners. England has never felt so overcrowded. Logan could almost take Dieppe again if he didn't suspect they'd still draw attention, even in a fire storm.
Bob Sethis becomes the first guy Logan has kissed on the lips in quite some years. He tells himself it's mostly to shut him up at first, but does it again because Bob's kind of good at it. Makes it feel like they're swapping more than spit, like they could live in one skin if they could just press close enough.
*****
They sit together on the mess hall steps, pretending the weak sunshine has some warmth to bask in. Bob is watching a soccer match across the courtyard, calling out from time to time in encouragement or dismay. Some of the guys shout back at him - it is all good natured, and for Logan, a comfortable background buzz. He is concentrating on rolling cigarettes, thinks his first effort is pretty okay until he goes to light it, and only the paper catches. The whole thing comes apart between his fingers in one limp flare.
“Aw, crap,” he says.
Bob reclaims his tobacco, tactfully without remark, and rolls one for the both of them, cupping it in his hands against the wind to light it. They pass it back and forth between them, the closest they can come to public intimacy.
Logan is watching the stopped clock and sinking lower on his step when he smells Keane approaching. He raises his lip without looking round.
“Lovely day,” he hears Bob say.
“Not playing?” Keane asks. He shoves his hands in his pockets and stands right in Bob' s view of the game.
“Otherwise occupied,” Bob says shortly.
Keane nods, and smiles like his mouth tastes bad. He hovers.
“Got a fag?”
“I'll make you one if you fuck off after. You're blocking my sun.”
“Charming.” Keane looks from Bob to Logan, but he can't catch Logan's eye. Bob makes a point of craning round him to watch the game while he rolls, one handed.
“There.” As he chucks it over. “Don't say I never do nothing for you.”
Keane catches the roll-up neatly, and turns it over it his hand.
“Got a light?” he asks.
“The French have,” Bob says. “Now bugger off.”
Keane laughs through his nose. Lingers a moment longer, like he's left something unsaid, then tucks the cigarette in his mouth and turns to leave.
“I can tell you made this,” he calls over his shoulder. “It's fucking bent.”
Logan raises one eyebrow, but is otherwise still. The word was directed at Bob, but it feels like it's his cue. He debates the merits of kicking up a fuss verses not doing. These men already know he is different from them, if not quite how, and he may have to live with them for many months yet. Might as well stroll into the middle of the soccer game and pop a claw through the ball, if he really wants to draw some attention. Be better if he did; it wouldn't put it on Bob, at least.
He watches Keane out the corner of his eye as he walks away, until Bob's silence starts to tug at him. He's watching the soccer still, seems outwardly unmoved, and is pulling on the last dregs of his own smoke. Catching Logan looking, he reaches to pass it. His movements have an awkward edge, like he's been made conscious of his skin.
Logan takes a drag, then kills it in the dirt. Gets to his feet, stretches, and strolls off after Keane. Catches up with him round the corner of the mess hall, out of sight of the courtyard. He breaks Keane's nose without raising his pulse.
He goes back to his step, cracking his knuckles. Bob is rolling again, and his lips are pursed. Logan wants to reach for him, but the yard is crowded. He scuffs his boot in the dirt and hunts for words instead.
“When people find out what I am,” he says. “They don't much care for it. This...” he gestures to his stomach, where by all that's decent, he should have a hole the size of his fist right now. “Or this...” he jabs a finger in Bob's direction. Bob meets his eyes at the gesture. The scar on his forehead bisects his frown. Logan's not sure where he's going, but he pushes on.
“What the fuck they figure I can do to help it, I don't know. They don't know what it's about. Keane'd crap his pants if he'd seen half the things I seen. Hell, that we seen. Where was he when you were hauling my ass off the beach, eh? I've had worse than that, believe me. Could break more than his nose, if it came to that.”
“You broke his nose?” Bob says to his match as he lights up again. “Nice one. What next? Gonna break the next bloke's? And the next?”
“If I have to.”
“Born to scrap.” Bob laughs without humour and blows smoke from his nose. “I think that's the most I've ever heard you say all in one go.”
“Then I hope you paid attention.”
“You have my full attention. Keane's a spiteful fucker is all. Just have a care.”
“Bobby, you're a spiteful fucker. Keane, he ain't worth pissing on.” Logan bites off the rise of his voice as the soccer ball bounces into range. Bob taps ash on the ground, waits for the coast to clear, and then says,
“You show everyone that bullet trick, Logan? Would you have told me, if I hadn't seen it?”
Logan rubs his knuckles.
“No,” he admits.
“Well, think on why, and have a care.”
“It's no one else's business.”
“Till they make it.”
Logan snorts, and flexes his hands.
“If someone wants to make me their business...” he begins, but Bob is shaking his head and he trails away. They are silent for a moment. The sun feels cold.
“You ending this?” Logan asks, looking for ground he can stand on at least. Bob sighs out smoke.
“For some gobby cunt with a nosebleed? No.”
“Then what?”
“I'm not bullet-proof like you,” he says. He hands the cigarette over. It's a gesture; there's barely a drag left, but Logan takes it. Wonders what it feels like to go down and not get up again. The earth doesn't want him, it spits him back out. Bob stands abruptly, brushes dust from the steps off his backside.
“Where are you going?” Logan asks.
“Somewhere alone,” he says. “You coming?”
Salt air in his nose again, always at Eastney. Men's sweat and old flannel. He buries his nose in Bobby's neck behind the stopped clock tower, and imagines there's only the two of them.
*****
In September 1944, the allies take Dieppe, and Keane takes a bullet right above the eye. He goes down kicking like a shot horse. When Logan tells Bob about it after, he doesn't smile either.
It feels like he's known Bob for a long time now, but in truth they've been together for only a few months in the space of two years. Logan's talents are shared around; he's sent where he's needed, and sees enough to re-write his standards of what constitutes hot and what constitutes hell. Bob, meanwhile, invades Sicily - single-handed, from the way that he tells it. Spends some time in North Africa too, though he doesn't talk about that. They're apart so much they cut a deal; not to worry, just to trust.
“Last thing I want to think of,” Bob tells him. “When I'm bleeding out in a mud pit, is how pissed off you're going to be. I'm counting on flights of angels, and I don't want you spoiling the mood.”
Logan still feels the tug every time. It's stupid to grow close to soldiers. Makes him feel like he's pushing to the front of the boat again. He's glad he can save Bobby a worry himself, at least. Bob thinks the odds are stacked in his favour.
“The more bullets that have your name on,” Bob says. “The less there are with mine. You just do what you do best, mate.”
The charm seems to hold. When their continents coincide, they get together, even wrangle leave together a couple of times, find places in London they're allowed to just be. Logan takes enough bullets to set up in munitions, and each one with Bobby's blessing.
When Japan falls, the West throws a party on the ashes. Hiroshima and Nagasaki are just storybook names to the people on the street. Logan wishes it were so for him.
Summer is dying on the wind in 1945 when he sees Bob Sethis for the final time. Portsmouth feels just the same, like they've forgotten to stop fighting. The sea gets in his bones again. On impulse, he drags Bob down a side street, and shoves him hard against the wall, pushing against him, a surge of rising blood and roaring ocean. He swears against Bobby's neck by all unholy that if anyone disturbs them now, he'll bang their heads so hard they'll wake up thinking the war's still on.
“Same old Logan,” Bob gasps in his ear. “Always up for a fight.” His breath stutters, and Logan draws back to look him in the eye, to try and read if he's needing this too, or just getting crushed against the brick work.
“Born to scrap,” he reminds him. Bob's eyes slide away from his.
Afterwards, they sit, in company that has been as comfortable as skin for all these years, except that Bob, in his head, already seems half way home. There are soldiers on the streets, and couples holding hands. Logan thinks of fires in the east.
“Did we fuck up?” he asks. “I feel like we fucked up.”
“We won,” Bob tells him round his cigarette, shaking out his match.
“Not that.”
Bob smiles, a thin and bloodless smile. And shrugs. Passes him the cigarette. Logan presses it to his lips and draws in the smoke. It's like a third party kiss, and it's the last they'll ever share.
*****
They write, because neither of them admitted to the end of it. Some things don't really ever stop, just get left behind when the world rolls round. Letters are infrequent, Logan not being much for words, and not always easy to find, while Bob's bad jokes lose some of their charm on paper.
He marries in '48. Winds up working in construction, saying he might as well try his hand at building houses, having spent six years contributing to the effort of knocking them all down. Has kids in the end, two girls and a boy. Writes of his children far more often than his wife.
Logan forgets his face as years pass by, just remembers him in parts. Long eyelashes, long fingers. The jagged scar on his forehead that he picked up in Dieppe. In Logan's mind's eye, it's still livid and red, badly washed against a pale forehead, though by now it must have faded to a laugh line, or been lost in the furrows of time. Logan himself has nothing even left to fade. The ghost of a gut wound sometimes. Nostalgic indigestion.
Sense memory betrays him too. He remembers Bobby stinking only of brine, perhaps because the sea is all there is between them now. This war has ruined oceans for him.
Author: smirnoffmule
Fandom: X-men Comicsverse
Pairing/characters: Logan/OMC
Rating: PG-13
Summary: Logan's never been one to back down from a fight, but in times of war, it's all too easy for things to just fall apart. Written for the lgbtfest prompt: "X-Men Comicsverse, Wolverine, the experience of being bisexual in one of the earlier eras of his 100+ year lifespan."
A/N: Big thanks to lilacsigil for a speedy and helpful beta. The title is from War Music by Christopher Logue.
Portsmouth, England. August, 1942.
Getting shot in the guts always gives Logan heartburn. No other part of his anatomy ever gives him so much crap about putting itself back together. If he keeps moving, it lets him ignore it, like it knows he's got a job to do, but he's been sitting still for hours, with the long ride home, the wait at the docks, the wait for debriefing, the wait now for transport back to the barracks, and it's really starting to gripe. Sea air is creeping in his lungs and in his bones.
He closes his eyes, and dozes like a big cat - outwardly quite still, but his senses never stop tracking the people around him until they start to creep into his dreams. Everyone smells of blood and brine, even the ones who think they've washed it off. Bad soap. Carbolic. Damp in the brick work. Stomach churning. Fuck it all.
He opens his eyes, and sees right away what might have prickled him awake. The guy next to him on the bench is leaning forward to look at him. When their eyes meet, he sits back, and looks a little flustered. Smiles like a caught out kid. His hair is wet from washing, and he has a fresh red cut snaking down from his hair line, bleaching all the colour from his face.
Logan considers glowering, but can't quite muster the energy. His belly is a sleepy burn. Kid was probably just checking to see he hadn't died, and who could blame him? They shared a boat ride home with corpses; shared an ocean too, not so long ago. He fully intends to close his eyes again, is starting to do so, when the guy speaks.
“They kept asking me what I saw,” he says. “Did I see men down, did I see planes. Of course I bloody did. Where the fuck do they think I've been all night?”
He's English. Logan remembers the voice from the beach, hissing in his ear, “If you're alive, shift.” He probably owes this guy something, for effort at least. He can't come close to a smile right now, but he doesn't scowl.
Funny - Not 48 hours ago, he was playing poker at Halnaker, and kind of bored. They don't get a warning, just a pocket full of francs, and a ride out to the harbour. Three helmsmen down before they even hit France, and all around, a light show. The tobacco factory by the beach is burning, throwing up a false dawn, but even over that, and the unclean sea, he can smell the dead men on the shore. Around him, nobody moves much or says a lot as the sea rolls them closer, their bayonets clutched in bloodless knuckles. Every nerve-end in his body roars; tells him he should hunker down, stay low, stay close, pack himself in, but none of these men around him can afford to take more than one bullet. He pushes his way to the front of the boat.
“I thought you got shot,” the English guy says. Kind of nonchalant. He shrugs a pouch of tobacco out of his pocket. Between that and the blood and the unwashed brine, Logan's stomach announces its intention to roll. His words feel like a curse; the worst damn luck to try and put upon a soldier. Their conversation is starting to draw attention. He remembers the flash, right on top of him, like the world exploded with him at the centre. Blood in his nose and rocks under his knees. The sea groaning. When sense reeled back, he became aware he was lying on someone who was kicking him. That was this guy.
He'd better talk. It feels like an effort, hauling words up from his guts.
“Not me,” he says.
“You fell on your arse.”
“You did too.”
The guy smiles like a grimace. He rolls a cigarette one handed. His fingers are deft; they're barely shaking. Dabs the paper to his tongue. Strokes the edge smooth with a thumb. Passes it to Logan like an afterthought, and then starts the process again for himself.
“I hope you've got a light,” he says. “I left mine in Dieppe.”
*****
Being special ops, Logan is outside of a brotherhood. He doesn't have a regiment, just gets attached by turns to whoever's seeing action. What's left of the Canadian strike force is sent back inland to Halnaker, to pick up on their poker game. Logan stays at Eastney, by the harbour, in case they want to throw him at the French again.
Eastney Barracks is an old stone hive of Royal Marines, and buzzes louder than Halnaker - more men crammed in, and more egos too. His new friend's name is Bobby Sethis. He shows Logan around, and points out the clock tower on the mess hall with particular pride. The clock face is shattered, the hands are still.
“They tried to hit us where it really hurts,” he says. “Right in the lunch. Middle of the day, can you believe it? No one killed but the clock. Next Jerry I come across, I'm going to break his watch just to make us even.”
It turns out Logan knows Sethis, by name at least. Units from Halnaker would come to Eastney for drills, and return full of stories; fights and jokes and dramas, all with this guy in the thick of them. It takes some work to make yourself notorious amongst Marines, and Logan is grudgingly impressed. Sethis is already in the planning stages of another Dieppe raid to recover his lost lighter.
When the Germans drop their pictures, he claims he can see it washed up on the shore. A propaganda bomb, it's called, and all Southern England takes it - photographs of Dieppe beach, strewn about with dead men. They aren't supposed to see them, but some grunt named Keane got given one by a girl in town. There is silence as it's passed around the barracks, every grainy face examined with care. Bravado swells when none of them look familiar - probably because they're all Canadians. Logan takes a long look, mostly without seeing. Without the smell, it doesn't bother him, and the dead are just a faceless jumble, loud in their stillness. Bob, who is perched on the edge of his bed, leans over and flicks a corpse with a thumbnail.
“I think I owed him money,” he says.
Keane looms over them, his face looking sour.
“You owe me money, Sethis,” he says. Logan gives his photo back to him. He has already learned that owing people money - and beer, and smokes - is pretty much a permanent state of being for Bob, and one that troubles him not in the slightest.
“What for?” Logan asks him, as Keane turns away.
“Shagging his sister,” Bob says cheerfully, and a little too loudly. Keane's back stiffens, but the whole room starts laughing. He'd be taking them all on if he wants to make a deal of it.
“It's not that,” Bob tells him later. “That I owe him money. Everyone owes everyone some shit they haven't got. He doesn't like me.”
“How come?”
“One of life's great mysteries,” he shrugs, his shoulders a little too casual. Catches Logan's eye and smiles, quick as a whip. Everything about him is quick; his wit, his speech, his temper. He laughs all the time, irrespective of his actual mood. His greatest attribute in Logan's eyes is he knows when to stop asking questions.
He's from London, he says. Logan doesn't mind cities, but can't imagine growing up in one. He's conscripted too, which comes as a surprise; he holds a gun like he's regular army. He can fit in any skin, Logan figures, if he wants it bad enough. They fall into step over the next few days, tend to drift together in crowded rooms.
Life in barracks starts to grate on Logan fast, especially at Eastney, which is hemmed in by city and pressed against the sea. Having company he can stand is a help; it keeps the heat off. People are more inclined to look twice at a man on his own. As it is, he's quickly accepted as one of Bobby's natural satellites, and Bob can handle talking, if there's talking to be done.
Still, he seeks out quiet moments. They take to sharing cigarettes in corners. Bob's sociable; he likes to talk, but he's background noise to Logan now. He knows it too, and can spot when he's been tuned out. It becomes a game of sorts, that Bob will bait him until he's hooked back in. It's a battle of wills sometimes, but good natured enough that Logan will let him win sometimes just to keep him playing.
They spend one evening sitting against the clock tower, and Sethis starts to sing him All the Nice Girls Love a Sailor. Logan jabs him in the ribs to shut him up, and Bob catches his hand and keeps it. The bones in Logan's knuckles don't sit quite like other people's, and Bob spreads out his fingers, turns his hand over, closes it to a fist. Logan watches him do it like it's someone else's.
“I've got a girl,” Bob announces. “Back home. You?”
“There are girls,” Logan says. “Wouldn't say I got any of them.”
Bob smiles, half to himself, it seems. He reaches out his hand to Logan's stomach, and slides it up under his shirt. His fingers are cold, and brush against where there should be bullet scars, but there's nothing left to feel. Even the hair has grown back in.
“Is that a trick?” he asks. “I know you got hit. I saw you turn a fucking somersault.”
Logan considers a lie, but feels like he ought to stop this now if he's going that way.
“I heal fast,” he says instead. “Always have.” He does not have the language for a further explanation. A lot seems to hinge on how Bobby will take this. His hand under Logan's shirt is letting in the night air.
Bob says nothing at all, just leans and presses his lips to Logan's stomach. It tickles, like the echo of a scar.
After that, it's more than cigarettes they share in quiet corners. England has never felt so overcrowded. Logan could almost take Dieppe again if he didn't suspect they'd still draw attention, even in a fire storm.
Bob Sethis becomes the first guy Logan has kissed on the lips in quite some years. He tells himself it's mostly to shut him up at first, but does it again because Bob's kind of good at it. Makes it feel like they're swapping more than spit, like they could live in one skin if they could just press close enough.
*****
They sit together on the mess hall steps, pretending the weak sunshine has some warmth to bask in. Bob is watching a soccer match across the courtyard, calling out from time to time in encouragement or dismay. Some of the guys shout back at him - it is all good natured, and for Logan, a comfortable background buzz. He is concentrating on rolling cigarettes, thinks his first effort is pretty okay until he goes to light it, and only the paper catches. The whole thing comes apart between his fingers in one limp flare.
“Aw, crap,” he says.
Bob reclaims his tobacco, tactfully without remark, and rolls one for the both of them, cupping it in his hands against the wind to light it. They pass it back and forth between them, the closest they can come to public intimacy.
Logan is watching the stopped clock and sinking lower on his step when he smells Keane approaching. He raises his lip without looking round.
“Lovely day,” he hears Bob say.
“Not playing?” Keane asks. He shoves his hands in his pockets and stands right in Bob' s view of the game.
“Otherwise occupied,” Bob says shortly.
Keane nods, and smiles like his mouth tastes bad. He hovers.
“Got a fag?”
“I'll make you one if you fuck off after. You're blocking my sun.”
“Charming.” Keane looks from Bob to Logan, but he can't catch Logan's eye. Bob makes a point of craning round him to watch the game while he rolls, one handed.
“There.” As he chucks it over. “Don't say I never do nothing for you.”
Keane catches the roll-up neatly, and turns it over it his hand.
“Got a light?” he asks.
“The French have,” Bob says. “Now bugger off.”
Keane laughs through his nose. Lingers a moment longer, like he's left something unsaid, then tucks the cigarette in his mouth and turns to leave.
“I can tell you made this,” he calls over his shoulder. “It's fucking bent.”
Logan raises one eyebrow, but is otherwise still. The word was directed at Bob, but it feels like it's his cue. He debates the merits of kicking up a fuss verses not doing. These men already know he is different from them, if not quite how, and he may have to live with them for many months yet. Might as well stroll into the middle of the soccer game and pop a claw through the ball, if he really wants to draw some attention. Be better if he did; it wouldn't put it on Bob, at least.
He watches Keane out the corner of his eye as he walks away, until Bob's silence starts to tug at him. He's watching the soccer still, seems outwardly unmoved, and is pulling on the last dregs of his own smoke. Catching Logan looking, he reaches to pass it. His movements have an awkward edge, like he's been made conscious of his skin.
Logan takes a drag, then kills it in the dirt. Gets to his feet, stretches, and strolls off after Keane. Catches up with him round the corner of the mess hall, out of sight of the courtyard. He breaks Keane's nose without raising his pulse.
He goes back to his step, cracking his knuckles. Bob is rolling again, and his lips are pursed. Logan wants to reach for him, but the yard is crowded. He scuffs his boot in the dirt and hunts for words instead.
“When people find out what I am,” he says. “They don't much care for it. This...” he gestures to his stomach, where by all that's decent, he should have a hole the size of his fist right now. “Or this...” he jabs a finger in Bob's direction. Bob meets his eyes at the gesture. The scar on his forehead bisects his frown. Logan's not sure where he's going, but he pushes on.
“What the fuck they figure I can do to help it, I don't know. They don't know what it's about. Keane'd crap his pants if he'd seen half the things I seen. Hell, that we seen. Where was he when you were hauling my ass off the beach, eh? I've had worse than that, believe me. Could break more than his nose, if it came to that.”
“You broke his nose?” Bob says to his match as he lights up again. “Nice one. What next? Gonna break the next bloke's? And the next?”
“If I have to.”
“Born to scrap.” Bob laughs without humour and blows smoke from his nose. “I think that's the most I've ever heard you say all in one go.”
“Then I hope you paid attention.”
“You have my full attention. Keane's a spiteful fucker is all. Just have a care.”
“Bobby, you're a spiteful fucker. Keane, he ain't worth pissing on.” Logan bites off the rise of his voice as the soccer ball bounces into range. Bob taps ash on the ground, waits for the coast to clear, and then says,
“You show everyone that bullet trick, Logan? Would you have told me, if I hadn't seen it?”
Logan rubs his knuckles.
“No,” he admits.
“Well, think on why, and have a care.”
“It's no one else's business.”
“Till they make it.”
Logan snorts, and flexes his hands.
“If someone wants to make me their business...” he begins, but Bob is shaking his head and he trails away. They are silent for a moment. The sun feels cold.
“You ending this?” Logan asks, looking for ground he can stand on at least. Bob sighs out smoke.
“For some gobby cunt with a nosebleed? No.”
“Then what?”
“I'm not bullet-proof like you,” he says. He hands the cigarette over. It's a gesture; there's barely a drag left, but Logan takes it. Wonders what it feels like to go down and not get up again. The earth doesn't want him, it spits him back out. Bob stands abruptly, brushes dust from the steps off his backside.
“Where are you going?” Logan asks.
“Somewhere alone,” he says. “You coming?”
Salt air in his nose again, always at Eastney. Men's sweat and old flannel. He buries his nose in Bobby's neck behind the stopped clock tower, and imagines there's only the two of them.
*****
In September 1944, the allies take Dieppe, and Keane takes a bullet right above the eye. He goes down kicking like a shot horse. When Logan tells Bob about it after, he doesn't smile either.
It feels like he's known Bob for a long time now, but in truth they've been together for only a few months in the space of two years. Logan's talents are shared around; he's sent where he's needed, and sees enough to re-write his standards of what constitutes hot and what constitutes hell. Bob, meanwhile, invades Sicily - single-handed, from the way that he tells it. Spends some time in North Africa too, though he doesn't talk about that. They're apart so much they cut a deal; not to worry, just to trust.
“Last thing I want to think of,” Bob tells him. “When I'm bleeding out in a mud pit, is how pissed off you're going to be. I'm counting on flights of angels, and I don't want you spoiling the mood.”
Logan still feels the tug every time. It's stupid to grow close to soldiers. Makes him feel like he's pushing to the front of the boat again. He's glad he can save Bobby a worry himself, at least. Bob thinks the odds are stacked in his favour.
“The more bullets that have your name on,” Bob says. “The less there are with mine. You just do what you do best, mate.”
The charm seems to hold. When their continents coincide, they get together, even wrangle leave together a couple of times, find places in London they're allowed to just be. Logan takes enough bullets to set up in munitions, and each one with Bobby's blessing.
When Japan falls, the West throws a party on the ashes. Hiroshima and Nagasaki are just storybook names to the people on the street. Logan wishes it were so for him.
Summer is dying on the wind in 1945 when he sees Bob Sethis for the final time. Portsmouth feels just the same, like they've forgotten to stop fighting. The sea gets in his bones again. On impulse, he drags Bob down a side street, and shoves him hard against the wall, pushing against him, a surge of rising blood and roaring ocean. He swears against Bobby's neck by all unholy that if anyone disturbs them now, he'll bang their heads so hard they'll wake up thinking the war's still on.
“Same old Logan,” Bob gasps in his ear. “Always up for a fight.” His breath stutters, and Logan draws back to look him in the eye, to try and read if he's needing this too, or just getting crushed against the brick work.
“Born to scrap,” he reminds him. Bob's eyes slide away from his.
Afterwards, they sit, in company that has been as comfortable as skin for all these years, except that Bob, in his head, already seems half way home. There are soldiers on the streets, and couples holding hands. Logan thinks of fires in the east.
“Did we fuck up?” he asks. “I feel like we fucked up.”
“We won,” Bob tells him round his cigarette, shaking out his match.
“Not that.”
Bob smiles, a thin and bloodless smile. And shrugs. Passes him the cigarette. Logan presses it to his lips and draws in the smoke. It's like a third party kiss, and it's the last they'll ever share.
*****
They write, because neither of them admitted to the end of it. Some things don't really ever stop, just get left behind when the world rolls round. Letters are infrequent, Logan not being much for words, and not always easy to find, while Bob's bad jokes lose some of their charm on paper.
He marries in '48. Winds up working in construction, saying he might as well try his hand at building houses, having spent six years contributing to the effort of knocking them all down. Has kids in the end, two girls and a boy. Writes of his children far more often than his wife.
Logan forgets his face as years pass by, just remembers him in parts. Long eyelashes, long fingers. The jagged scar on his forehead that he picked up in Dieppe. In Logan's mind's eye, it's still livid and red, badly washed against a pale forehead, though by now it must have faded to a laugh line, or been lost in the furrows of time. Logan himself has nothing even left to fade. The ghost of a gut wound sometimes. Nostalgic indigestion.
Sense memory betrays him too. He remembers Bobby stinking only of brine, perhaps because the sea is all there is between them now. This war has ruined oceans for him.